


The Failings of Self-Perception

by springbok7



Series: An Assortment of Teas and Biscuits [13]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Body Dysphoria, M/M, Multi, Trans Male Character, Unreliable Narrator, established poly relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-08 18:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15248976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/pseuds/springbok7
Summary: Four times Alec deals with an unpleasant situation and one time he doesn't get the reaction he was expecting.





	1. The First Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [Dassandre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/gifts).



> To found family. You make life worth living! Thank you!
> 
> This fic tackles some topics that can be very difficult to deal with, and I hope that I have treated them with the respect and mindfulness they deserve. Please do let me know if I have failed to do so in some way. Also, mind the tags, specifically the unreliable narrator tag.
> 
> Beta-ed by the lovely [Dassandre](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre). All remaining errors and typos are mine. Please feel free to let me know if you spot any and/or feel there should be additional tags. I welcome constructive criticism, but neither support or feed trolls.
> 
>    
>  _I do not own these characters. No infringement of copyright is intended and no profit is being made from this piece of fan-fiction._
> 
>  
> 
> Written 08 July 2018

The first time it happens, he is deep undercover in the arse-end of Guyana tracking down drug smugglers who’ve taken to a little kidnapping-tourists-for-ransom on the side.

He makes do with what he has.  Isn’t that the life of an agent, spur of the moment improvisation?

So.

Pretends to allergies he doesn’t have.  Keeps tissues on his person at all times.  

Downs copious amounts of ibuprofen, since paracetamol never seems to do shit unless it’s a headache he’s fighting.  Claims to have been punched in the gut while sparing if anyone catches him dosing himself.

He bathes alone.  Somehow manages to find toilets with stalls, with the delightfully standard bins in each stall.

Thank fuck for South American plumbing and the custom of disposing of ‘disposables’ -- bog roll or otherwise -- in the bin rather than in the loo.

He sleeps alone.  Should appearances need to be maintained, he brings a mark to her home and leaves her sated and exhausted, pleads healing injury to avoid using more than mouth and fingers.  Skillfully of course, but still.

But every day he worries, surrounded by thugs.  Surely they can tell. Surely they know he’s not a  _ real _ man.  The thought of what will happen when they discover his deception chills his blood to ice.

And it’s not just  _ that _ .  He still has nightmares.  Still wakes up screaming ... crying out in fear or pain.  Flashbacks are rare but the dreams can be vivid and lurid and ghastly, and sometimes he doesn’t immediately remember exactly where he is.  Who is with him. That could be just the tiniest bit hazardous for their health. And it’s a mite tricky to get intel from a corpse.

Safer to sleep alone ... for all concerned.

That he needs to at all weighs on him.

But what choice has he?  

The mission is the mission.  Regardless the cost. He loses himself in that.  Places all his focus on it. And does not lie awake in an empty and cold bed wishing for something else.

Wishing for more.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you think.


	2. The Second Time

The second time it happens he is at home for mandatory downtime and free to hole up in his dumpster fire of a flat and mope for five days.

Take hot showers whenever he feels like it -- every three hours the first two days.

Dig out the hot water bottle from whatever dusty corner it’d migrated to.

Eat ice cream and lounge on the sofa and watch crap telly.

He’s got a secret stash of supplies, and the only black mark on that time is the need to replenish.

He passes visually, and no one thinks much of a taciturn bloke grabbing bits and pieces for his old lady, especially when it’s all set down on the conveyor belt with a shrug and a sigh, a bag of crisps and a loaf of bread, two bottles of vodka, a case of beer, and a commiseratory eye-roll shared with the chap ringing it all up.

He’d have used the self checkout machine, but a gaggle of women with prams and trolleys made that an unappetizing option.  They are obviously all friends, nattering on a hundred miles an hour. Flock of bloody chickens! It grates on his last nerve.

As he hands the cashier a credit card, he is thankful his line of work means he’ll never want for appropriate ID when -- or if -- he’s asked for it.  Having to have that conversation now ... explain the discrepancies ... well, there are other tortures he’d opt to undergo instead.

The bored cashier doesn’t ask though, and he is grateful to be rung up and out of there before the female horde has completed their transactions.

Normally he doesn’t care, isn’t bothered by women in the slightest, quite enjoys their company, in fact, and has even picked up a bird here and there along the way -- and none the wiser, no arguments when he says he just wants to pleasure them, no questions when he grimaces like he’s in pain as he moves, and doesn’t volunteer his own nudity.  But now? With the knowledge of what’s going on, and the knots that knowledge always twists him into? They are the  _ last _ creatures on the planet he wants anything to do with.

Not with the evidence of how far he still has to go bouncing about in the shopping bag he grips white-knuckled as he strides out of the shop.

Because they  _ will _ know.  Of  _ course _ they will know.  He can’t hide it from  _ real _ women.  In that moment, he’s as certain he will be revealed as a fraud if they catch sight of him as he is that the sky outside is cloudy grey, and he wants no part of it.

He makes it home without incident and resolves not to step foot out of the flat again for three days.  Not until it is over!

Thank fuck for takeaway delivery!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Show Alec some love, click that kudos or leave a comment!


	3. The Third Time

The third time it happens, several years later, he is a Double O, and once more deep undercover, this time in Singapore.  

He has taken to keeping a stash of supplies with him, buried at the bottom of his go-bag.  Just the bare essentials, none of them painkillers. Those he can easily get his hands on.

A quick visit to a sparring match, and he’s got all the excuse he needs for any drugs.

No one questions him, and he finds himself both grateful and exasperated that this one is mild enough he’s able to continue the mission with no one the wiser, not even the new Quartermaster -- his eyes and ears everywhere -- hacking into one video feed and CCTV camera after another, like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower in a meadow.

He is, however, mindful of those eyes and ears, and -- much as he hates the idea of stealing from folk already on the poorer side of the scale -- pilfers what he needs from the local shops.

He does go back and buy three bottles of water from the old man, tips him generously, but the frustration of necessity eats at him for the rest of the run.

He makes it home in one piece, with most of his tech for once, and the Quartermaster bats narry an eyelid at him.

He calls it a win.

No one at Six knows.  Well, no one but Y’da.  She’s sworn to secrecy -- patient rights and all that -- and is his go-to for any question. 

At her house, however.

Can’t be seen voluntarily entering Medical with no obviously life-threatening injuries.

Reputation to maintain and all that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment and let me know what you think so far!


	4. The Fourth Time

The fourth time it happens is ... different.

He tumbles from the bed and scrambles into the corner of the room, wedging himself between a sturdy wardrobe and a chest of drawers, eyes wide and frantic, heart staccato against his sternum, lungs like bellows.  

Shaken by the abrupt deposit on the floor.  

Terrified by the luridity of the dream.  

Disoriented by the overlap of reality and imagination and the double-shot of adrenaline pumping through his veins.

It takes him a long time to register where he is.  _ When  _ he is.

He isn’t seventeen anymore.

He hasn’t just been beaten within an inch of his life by his father and his belt and his assertions that: 

“Ilyana  _ will _ act with propriety.”

“It’s just a phase, you’ll grow out of it.  We’ll not be encouraging this, you  _ will _ be respectful of your father.”

“Ilyana, you will learn to cook and clean and keep the house and yourself respectable, like your mother does, like all women should.  That is my duty to you as your father.”

The blood from the belt and its buckle -- welts livid from back to thighs -- had stained both the supple leather and the shirt his father had thrown at him once he felt him sufficiently “taught.”

He had run away that very night.

“Lock her in the attic to think on her sins against God and human decency.”  His mother had obeyed, lips a thin line of disapproval. He had instead thrown everything important to him into a rucksack, his jeans and home-made binder and all the rest, slipped open the window, climbed across the roof and down the brick facing, disappearing into the inky darkness.

He hacked off the rest of his hair, the trigger for the beating in the first place.  His father had caught him cutting off the long plait right at his nape.

He joined the ranks of the street urchins while he healed, learning to pick pockets and doss anywhere there was a shred of warmth.

Soon that too became intolerable.  Hiding in plain sight. Always looking for a loo where he could take care of his business without outing himself to the other urchins.

He was no fool. He possessed a perfectly functional pair of ears, thank you kindly.

He could hear the activities that went on around him at night.  Some of it was less ... reciprocated ... than others.

And he knew, without a shadow of doubt, that if  _ they _ knew what he was, his cries and pleas would be added to the night air.

So he kept silent and stayed apart, learnt to fight, learnt to be as tough on the outside as he was learning to be on the inside.

And one day,  _ she _ showed up.

Tiny, wee thing she was.  All done up in her fancy, functional suit with her two silent shadows hovering behind like birds of prey ready to strike.

Walking into that pit of human detritus like she owned the place.

Fuck, she may well have.  He’d never know.

Talking to the kids.  Sizing them up.

His turn.

She looked right through him.

Saw his soul.  His core. His essence.  And he never even opened his mouth. 

“You’ll do,” she said.

And that was that.

He was bundled up, taken to a facility, given a room with its own ensuite and clothes and food and access to medical care if he wished it.

And to tiny vials of a miracle.  If he wished it.

He did.

He stayed for three years.

Took courses, took his O-levels and his A-levels.  

Took his miracle.  Worked out in the gym every chance he got.  Bulked up. 

His voice deepened.  

Then he shaved.  

Grew out his ragged hair and then cut it the way  _ he _ wanted it cut.

She wanted him to get some miles on him, so he enlisted.

No one ever knew.   All the papers he’d ever need, she had them.  God only knows how. He didn’t question it.

She gave him everything, and in return, he gave her his loyalty.

He served six years and met Bond, James Bond outside a pub whilst on leave.

They became friends, then best friends, and then brothers.

But he always wanted something ... extra.  Didn’t know how to ask though.

Let it sit, for years, on the back burner.  Always aware of the slowly simmering attraction but James slept with women.  Only ever slept with women. 

And he?  

He wasn’t a woman, even if he still had some of the parts -- the surgical scars on his torso lost in the patchwork of others that crisscross his skin -- and James had never given him any indication of having broader horizons.

He was too much a coward to push, to explore that, because he’d rather have this, rather have the brotherly camaraderie than take a chance on losing it all.  He found other outlets when the itch beneath his skin grew too much and birds weren’t scratching it quite right. Found a willing and anonymous prick to choke himself on, and never looked back, never took up the offers of reciprocation.

And James never seemed to notice.

To be fair, they served Queen and country, they went where they were ordered, and at times didn’t see each other for weeks at a stretch.

But the bonds they’d forged were strong, regardless.

They left the service together. They joined Six together, just as  _ she _ had always intended.

And then she died.

He huddles in his scrap of safety, back against the wall, solid sides, only one approach for the enemy.  He won’t let them get him. Won’t let them hurt him again. He will fight. 

He will not let them make him a girl again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please show Alec some love!


	5. The Aftermath

As he crouches in the small space, shivering, he feels that which he dreads.

A wetness between his thighs, a scent that is unmistakable to any who have ever smelt it.

He shudders and freezes.

Has he woken the others?  Has his nightmare and precipitous departure from their shared bed drawn the others from slumber?

The measured pace of a single pair of lungs finally reaches his ears and he recalls -- belatedly -- that James is not here, away on a mission for a sennight.

The sense of relief is profound.

He clambers slowly to his feet and makes his way in the darkness to the ensuite. 

He pushes the door closed behind him and cleans himself up as quietly as he can, tossing the bloody toilet paper into the water and dropping the lid to hide the evidence from himself.  He does not flush it, doesn’t want to risk waking the sleeper on the other side of the door.

He does what he needs to do, the crinkling of the wrapper unnaturally loud in the quiet space, and then sinks down onto the lid, dropping his face into his hands.

The adrenaline has faded.  He aches now in all the usual spots.  He hadn’t noticed in the aftermath of that horrid dream.  His back hurts, right over his kidneys. His guts too, tucked in low in his pelvis.  His head as well, though whether that is from the dream or  _ this _ , he doesn’t know. 

He will not cry.  He refuses to let the frustration and humiliation of this moment get under his skin.  He will not. 

He will not let his father win.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, rocking.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to register the presence in front of him, and the gentle voice speaking soft words.

“...  _ mon coeur _ ...  _ c’est bien _ ...  _ tu es ici _ ...  _ avec moi _ ...  _ avec moi et avec Jacques aussi _ ...”

A hand strokes over a hunched shoulder and suddenly his face is buried in the warmth of Q’s belly, in the soft skin above the elastic of the pyjama bottoms he wears.  

His arms wrap around Q’s hips, hands fisted in the back of the shirt hanging from Q’s shoulders.  He never buttons it. James loves to tease Q about showing off his “wiry strength,” but regardless, he is grateful that Q doesn’t, because the points of contact -- flesh to flesh-- are the only things keeping him from shattering.

“ _ Tu es en sécurité _ .”

The soft voice whispers above his head, gentle fingers card through his hair.

He cannot stop the tide; the dam bursts, and he is wracked with sobs. Years worth flood out.   The pain. The humiliation. The uncertainty.

The constant, endless, neverending fear.

His body shudders against Q’s skin, shudders beneath Q’s hands.  He feels shame. But Q does not pull away, does not reject him.

Instead ...

" _ C'est bon.  Nous t'aimons.  Nous sommes ici.  Tu vas bien. Tu es en sécurité. _ ”

The gentle tones and the gentle touches are more powerful than the hardest hits he has ever endured.

His defences lie crumbled around him.  He is open and raw and exposed, but Q does not withdraw.  Does not cast him aside as he has feared for so very long.

" _ Tu vas bien.  Tu es en sécurité.  Il n'y a personne d'autre ici.  Il n'y a personne ici mais nous. _ ”

The words are repeated over, and over, and over.

He has forgotten that Q speaks French.  The melodic sound soothes him, releases the tears, and the tears wash away decades of pain.

He is not naive enough to think that this will fix it, that this will suddenly make everything ‘right’. 

But ... he has been accepted.

Q -- this man that he loves more than life itself -- has accepted him.

If Q can, then perhaps James will as well.

It will be a journey.  He knows that.

But every journey starts with the first step.

He releases his grip on Q’s shirt and presses a kiss to his sternum.

He looks up and meets concerned eyes.

“We need to talk.”

Q’s smile is incandescent.

“I love you,” he whispers back.

Alec does not know how long Q has suspected, nor what he has done to deserve this man, but he is grateful for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations (I'm super rusty, so if I mucked these up, do please let me know!)
> 
> “... mon coeur ... c’est bien ... tu es ici ... avec moi ... avec moi et avec Jacques aussi ...”  
> ... my heart ... it's okay ... you are here ... with me ... with me and with James as well ...
> 
> “Tu es en sécurité.”  
> You are safe.
> 
> "C'est bon. Nous t'aimons. Nous sommes ici. Tu vas bien. Tu es en sécurité.”  
> It's okay. We love you. We are here. You're okay. You are safe.
> 
> "Tu vas bien. Tu es en sécurité. Il n'y a personne d'autre ici. Il n'y a personne ici mais nous.”  
> You're okay. You are safe. There is no one else here. There is no one here but us.

**Author's Note:**

> Transgender people deal with a lot of aspects of sociocultural interaction that cisgender people are unaware of purely because cisgender interaction is all cisgender people have ever known. We all need to be mindful of the unconscious social biases we are conditioned to as we grow up, and be open to and accepting of those who might not necessarily fit our internal concept of what gender should be, just as we should be open to and accepting of those whose sexuality might not necessarily fit our internal concepts. Asexual, transgender, bisexual, genderfluid, homosexual, intersex, heterosexual, and/or cisgender, we are all our own person, and we all deserve to be accepted for exactly who and what we are. To be treated with respect and compassion, regardless of how well our "moral values" line up with anyone else's. None of these aspects of ourselves are under our control, they are merely aspects of ourselves, just as being born with red hair, or hazel eyes, or freckles are aspects. They are simply a part of who we are. 
> 
> It is my hope and my dream that one day the entire world comes to accept us for exactly who and what we each are.
> 
> Unless you're a serial killer or a rapist, or equivalent. In which case, there is a frozen tundra in the Ninth Circle with your name on it!


End file.
